off flavor help!!!!

I brewed a Sierra Nevada stout clone and let it ferment for 5 days before kegging. I hit my FG no problem . my ferment temps for that 5 days was about 62 at night to 68 during the day. I transferred to my keg.
I did not have any star san so I used iodophor to clean the keg and my racking cane.
I hit it with some Co2 and put it in the back room of my house. is has been really cold the last few days with temps around 25-50 degrees. The beer has been in the keg for 3 days now. I pulled a sample and it was still alittle hoppy with a nice back bone of diacetyl. I let the keg drip dry for a few minutes before I put beer in it and rinsed some of the foam around the lid also. Do you think that is the problem. Maybe the off flavor is from the iodophor or am I just not done fermenting enough. If i warm the keg back up would that help?

thanks this sucks... I am also nervious b/c i re-used the yeast in my beer going now

dirtyd49 said:

or am I just not done fermenting enough.

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5 days after fermentation will reveal all sorts of funk, greenness, and yeast. Don't worry about that next beer using its yeast. Just leave that one alone for three weeks before racking. Reaching the FG doesn't mean its ready to be transferred. Yeast take a while to clean up after reaching FG.

If you kegged a 5 day old beer, that's pretty early! I've never kegged a beer younger than 2 weeks old, except for the one time we did a British mild swap and I kegged it at 8 days. Even after fermentation is over, the yeast are still busy, "cleaning up" their own waste products, such as diacetyl. After the fermentable sugars are gone, and FG is reached, the yeast start chowing down on diacetyl and other substances before going dormant when there is nothing left.

As far as temperature, were those temperature you gave the fermentation temperature, or the room temperature? Do you monitor the actual fermentation temperatures during primary?

My gut feeling is that you removed the beer from the yeast way too soon, so the yeast didn't finish the job of removing the diacetyl, and then kept it cold so that the yeast have gone totally dormant.

Not much you can do now to clean up the diacetyl, but you could try keeping it at 70 degrees for 2 weeks to see if the yeast remaining in suspension can clean it up a bit.

are you sure you are tasting diacetyl? It's buttery/butterscotch tasting. I don't think I would ever think of iodophor as causing a buttery taste.

I did not think it was the iodophor either. it is diacetyl for sure. my temps listed were room temps. I shook the keg and will try warming it back up. I hope there was enough yeast to do the job. do yhou think I could add more yeast?

i used the 1056. i agree it was soon. I brewed this first to use as a starter for a bigger batch and i needed the yeast. So you think that by warming it back up will help? I was thinking i will try that and give it a week or two in the keg at room temp and will see what happens.

dirtyd49 said:

i used the 1056. i agree it was soon. I brewed this first to use as a starter for a bigger batch and i needed the yeast. So you think that by warming it back up will help? I was thinking i will try that and give it a week or two in the keg at room temp and will see what happens.

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It might help. Since it was so early, you probably still had plenty of yeast in suspension. In my experience, though, it won't help very much. I'd still give it a try, since the beer needs some conditioning time anyway.

I'd also suggest getting a cheap stick-on thermometer for the outside of your fermenter, so you can monitor the actual fermentation temperature. That's important, since a lower temperature fermentation will take a bit longer to ferment out, as well as longer to clean up the by-products of fermentation like diacetyl.

no off flavors I ended up adding coffee and it was nice and roasty with a nice dry coffee finish. not too bad!